Tired of the same old conference calls? Want a new way to communicate with a team of people you wish you didn’t have to work with? Former Chief Software Engineer at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie, gets it. Now, he is releasing a new app to help you do it.

Talko is an interactive voice application that essentially gives you the ability to add a new scope to voice calls or recorded messages.

According to the app’s synopsis, we are using smartphones to connect more, but talking less and less. Voice doesn’t factor in so much thanks to text messages and social media. Which limits personal interaction and human emotion, banishing it from the conversation. Plus, it is slow and cumbersome.

With Talko, Ozzie hopes to encourage people to start using voice automation and communication more frequently. You can send recorded messages between you and one person, or a whole team. Add photos to voice messages and live chat so others can see what you see at that moment. Organize your conversations, messages and recordings through hashtags and keywords, and just apply voice to team and group interactions again.

Conversations are recorded between all participants within the app, so that it can be referred to later. This is an important feature for those who plan to try it as a team device for professional projects. Freelancers may also find this rather helpful to communicate with clients, and get a solid recording to terms, conditions and plans, which can then be shared with others on a project.

Ozzie says that this is a way of getting past recorded conference calls, and how they work inefficiently. Talko is supposed to be more intuitive, and provide tools that are important to users. That way we begin to once again equate the phone with voice…something that no one seems to really do anymore.

He does have a point. How often do you actually use your phone for real voice communication? I would say I use mine for about 10% of all my interactions on my phone. Everything else is text, messenger, email, or social media apps.

In fact, this afternoon a friend called from Australia, and he and I had the longest conversation via voice that I’ve had for at least the last three months. Maybe we could all afford to go back to that form of interaction, where you don’t have to try and ascertain someone’s mood based on whether they have provided an emoticon.